This article from SWET Newsletter, No. 121 is now available to the public.

Self-Publishing a Self-Initiated Translation

A professional non-fiction translator for over 40 years, Fred Uleman this September self-published Rethinking the Constitution: An Anthology of Japanese Opinion, a translation of Kodansha’s 2004 Nihon no kenpo: Kokumin shuken no ronten. SWET asked Uleman how he came to translate and publish a book he was not paid to do, and what it involved.

The article mentions that BookSurge was “affiliated with Amazon.” This is no longer the case; it is now a wholly-owned subsidiary, as is another POD publisher named CreateSpace. Amazon acquired BookSurge primarily to get hold of its POD technology, and originally the plans called for a BookSurge one-off printing line to be installed in every Amazon warehouse. Apparently these plans are still active to some extent, but somewhat bypassed by Kindle and Amazon’s own restructuring of how it handles POD books.

BookSurge is still one way to get a book in print, but the situation is pretty complex and likely to get more so.